Emblem

Last week, German newspapers burst forth with a photograph of a U. S. officer inspecting a detachment of troops. On the left shoulders of their uniforms were swastikas. Good Nazis were encouraged to make typical Nazi deductions from the captions, one of which reads: "The swastika is a badge of honor in the American Army." No Nazi editor bothered to print easily obtainable explanations.

The picture showed a pirt of the 45th Division of the National Guard, which has headquarters at Oklahoma City, maintains units in Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. In August 1924, the division, at the suggestion of the Arizona department, adopted as its insignia an old Navajo Indian emblem, a swastika.* In August 1924, Adolf Hitler was in Cell No. 7, Landsberg Fortress, near Munich, serving time for his "beer-hall Putsch," eleven years away from making the swastika the centre of the German national flag.

*The swastika developed independently as a symbol of good and bad luck in many cultures.

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